Online social networking sites have rapidly grown in the past few years, with millions of new users signing up every day. The online social network has become popular because of its ability to allow users to share their interests, activities and thoughts with other users of such social network. Examples of such social networks include Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The massive platform for social interaction has allowed users (including individuals, small, mid sized and large businesses, educational organizations and federal and state governments), to maintain a direct line of communication with those who have common interests. For example, a user may post contact information, background information and other member-specific data, and then other users of the social network can view the posted data. The social network also allows users to create a group of members with a common interest. In general, the information that a user posts is able to be seen by other users that have a relationship to that user within a given social network.
Evolving from these recent developments is the field of social media. Under social media, traditional group message delivery, such as television, radio, billboards and so on, is replaced by creating content customized for, and sent directly to, the users with whom one user interacts via a social network. Although this concept in the non-digital world is simply a ‘word of mouth’ campaign, which is a very old idea, a social network allows an advertising user to distribute information to a set of other users of the social network with the purpose of promoting that information via the social network. Ideally, those users are connected to other users who see that information via the social network and choose to continue to promote the information to another set of connected users through the same social network.
In the past, much of the focus has been on how to create content that users will want to share for its own value. Users have had great success with various types of content, ranging from coupons to ‘how to’ articles to funny videos. Such content generally refers to content that is created and subsequently linked to users of a social network. Such content that is promoted by a user of a social network and is subsequently promoted by other users connected to such first user and then by other users connected to such subsequent users and so on, thus being shared to a large number of users in a short amount of time is said to have gone “viral”, and typically is considered a successful marketing endeavor. However, this “viral” content has a few major setbacks. An advertising user generally has no control over whether or not content that such user attempts to promote will be spread by other users of the social network, regardless of how much time or money is spent. Additionally, if the content does get spread, there may be varied contextual surrounding to the content which may or may not actually hurt the advertising user. Finally, should the content spread in a positive format, the ability to track how it spreads and understand the value of the various networks is not likely possible. Without effectively deriving the value, there cannot be appropriate rewards associated with it.
Some methods have been developed to provide to a user the ability to create content and to send such content to other targeted members of his social network. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/193,705 sets forth a system by which a user of a social network may inform other users about the actions of the first user in his group on a third party website, i.e., the user has purchased a particular item, will attend an event or has added a connection to a profile for a certain business. As a further example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/495,396 sets forth a method of providing information to users of a social network by receiving an indicator of an action performed at a third party website by a first user. Promotional information is created and stored. Upon election by a first user to allow such information to be displayed to a second user with whom the first user interacts in a social network, the information is transmitted. The method is driven by the action of the first user, such as a purchase of shoes.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system for facilitating the distribution of information by a third party (such as a business or organization) in a targeted, customized and automated manner to users of multiple social networks, as well as a way to track statistics resultant from the spread of that information. What is further needed is the implementation of such method and system to significantly enhance online marketing campaigns.